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I still can’t believe just how bad-ass Aquaman is now, at times it’s seemed like Johns has been trying a bit too hard to make the character ‘cool’, but reading this issue, you could see that he’s succeeded. That fight between Aquaman and Black Manta was just awesome, and you really got the sense that Aquaman was almost as dangerous as Manta, that the hate is so strong he could end up killing him. Aquaman isn’t just cool, he’s a scary motherfucker. I also like that Johns is continuing to develop ‘The Others’ and add new characters to the DCU. The Operative gets the spotlight in this one, and he’s a very interesting character, not just the opening scene where he’s doing his Splinter Cell thing, but also the cool twist where he’s not a young guy being mentored by an old man, but instead he’s the old man. It’s just a shame that reveal was on the opposite page to the panel with the photograph, it would have been cooler for there to be an ad there or something, so the twist wasn’t immediately given away. But even so, he’s a senior citizen who kicks ass, and he has a plane with a book-shelf, not half bad.